


Redux II Missing Scenes (Until I can come up with a better  title)

by settledownfrohike



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Cancer Arc, F/M, Missing Scene, Redux II, post ep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-16 01:21:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19307761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/settledownfrohike/pseuds/settledownfrohike
Summary: Missing Scenes from Redux II





	1. Chapter 1

It’s the kind of note only dogs can hear. Or maybe only the dying. Wailing high above above middle C reaching past the inner ear to tug at the base of the brain. It draws her out from an opiate haze and she has to remind herself of her surroundings, an excruciating moment of clarity. She registers his presence second. A brown tuft of hair, the broad heaving back of him. She considers for a moment, letting the morphine numb her senses and letting it drag her back under, allowing him his pride. She feels her heart crack anyway. The IV in her hand tugs relentlessly as she brings it to rest in his scalp, hot and humid with exertion. He does not have the energy to pretend. He retrieves her hand, gingerly, feeling the tubes sunk into her veins, delivering the ineffectual poison. He says nothing, only kisses her palm, and places it to his soaked cheek. His eyes are red and wide and lost, his expression desperate and panicked. He is anchored on his knees at her bedside, clinging to a buoy, tossed to and fro by violent seas. Ever the sailor’s daughter, she smiles calmly in the midst of turbulence. Her eyes are the horizon, steady, resolute, the promise of landing on solid ground. As queasy as she is, her grip tightens, and together they weather the storm.

“Is this seat taken?”

He’s seated, of all places, the hospital chapel. Not for solace, there is nowhere on earth for that.

He’d come here to rail against a God he doesn’t believe in, challenge his validity, face to face.

But instead he finds himself a willing sacrifice, forehead upon clasped hands, praying to be struck down in her stead.

Fresh from weeping at her bedside, the gaze he casts upward at Maggie is swollen and inflamed with grief. He dare not speak lest the offering of a maternal comfort open the floodgates. She spares him any sort of pity, instead clasping his left hand between both of hers, the brush of her thumb over his ring finger anything but subtle.

Her face is cast upward towards Mary, and her eyes are closed.

“I feel the need to apologize, for my son.” He’s too tired to feign ignorance, sorry-son-of-a-bitch that he is, but he does at least attempt at a weak shake of the head and a whispered, “No, Mrs. Scully.” She smiles ruefully, and starts speaking to no one in particular, “My mother always hated Bill. She never wanted the Navy life for me… ‘gypsies’ she called them, but… I loved him,” her voice has taken on a stronger, richer tone now, and then turns wistful, “I would’ve followed him anywhere. Dana has always assumed her tenacity came from her father,” she’s nodding as she says this, in the way that mothers do when they know better, “but she is her mother’s daughter.” He doesn’t know where she’s going with this or why she’s chosen to address it now, and maybe she doesn’t either, but when she affixes that familiar azure gaze at him and says that she believes that their devotion to one another, whatever it is, has brought her daughter back from the brink once before, and she has faith that it can again, it’s the closest thing to hope he’s felt in a while.

 

————

Kimberly pokes her head through the door amongst the shouting and chaos to alert Mulder that he has a personal call. Her eyes are wide and foreboding toward Skinner, and she directs them toward the floor when Mulder looks her way. The damage here is done, and he darts toward Skinners office, leaving Blevins to the wolves. He hears Maggie’s voice, “Fox...” thick with tears and assumes the worst, dropping the phone at Kimberly’s desk, unable to stomach the rest. He’s been unable to stomach anything really, so he’s running purely off of anger and adrenaline. He has no idea how he arrives back at the hospital, carries himself on numb limbs to the room, to the news that will be his end.

He wishes he’d kissed her lips instead of her cheek. He decides he will, now, cold as they might be.

He’s done a lot of things lately grown men aren’t supposed to do. Cry in front of women, swoon at the declaration of good news. The word, ‘remission’ came from the lips of a ghost, he was sure. But when he reached for her, the hand was warm. He hears Maggie bark his given name in alarm, and his world goes black. He awakens to the face of a hovering Bill Jr., looking ever constipated, and just past that, an angel. Pale and luminous, mirthful and empathetic, as only his angel would be.


	2. Chapter 2

Two nurses and a very insistent Maggie help him from the floor, huddling and fussing over him appropriately, his ears vaguely registering Scully’s voice in the background insisting that he go down to the ER to get checked out. Christ, but it was good to hear her scolding. He wished he could faint every day of his life from now on if only to hear her bark, “Mulder!!” over and over again. Voice meant breath and breath meant she yet lived. She lived. She was going to live.  Isn’t that what she had meant?

They finally all agreed on allowing him a cup of juice and a cookie to bring his blood sugar to an acceptable level, provided he stay put in a chair keeping his head between his legs, which suited him just fine being that he couldn’t bring himself to meet her eyes. He had no intention of making a sobbing spectacle of himself with Bill glowering in the corner like a petulant teenager.

What passed for a cookie was bland and dry but downed easily enough with the “juice” that tasted more like a melted popsicle than an actual orange. Slowly his racing heart began to recede to an acceptable rate and the sweat coating his body began to dry, leaving him sticky and chilled. Daring a glance up, he found Maggie at Scully’s bedside, kissing her daughter’s knuckles and thanking God, oblivious to Scully’s sobering definitions of what remission really meant, that the cancer was not gone in fact but dormant. The Devil would not be defeated, only smothered for the time being. According to their faith, Satan could only truly lose his hold on this world when a Savior had been born and sacrificed to one day resurrect from the dead, eventually claiming the victory in the Last and Holy war on evil. He knew of no such savior. Not yet, not in this story.

Time had been bought nonetheless, and as for Mulder, he could only thank whomever had been listening to his offer of sacrifice in the chapel. He would meet his end in exchange for this charity, of that he was sure. If it be tomorrow, he was ready. Samantha was alive, albeit a stranger to him, and Scully’s beautiful heart was still beating. He could be done with this life in a moment knowing those two things. Til death do we part…his left ring finger faintly tingled, sympathetic nervous system recalling Maggie’s thinly veiled hint at her understanding of the order of things.

His legs still felt limp and toneless as he searched the hallway for any sign of a restroom, which mercifully ended up being just past the nurse’s station. Before he could truly embarrass himself once again he made it to the sink and began to splash generous amounts of icy tap over his cheeks and around his neck. His heart had begun to thud again suspiciously and he had hoped he could ward off another attack of the vapors. A look into the mirror revealed glassy eyes and ashen skin, and he chastised himself inwardly for his inability to pull it the fuck together. His heart continued to pick up its pace, and yet he could not physically draw in enough oxygen to pacify its need. A sudden painful, unrelenting tension in his chest began to build until he could only collapse back against the outside of a stall, desperately tearing at his collar and tie in search of freedom from a sense of helplessness and terror that had rapidly begun to consume him, making his vision swim and the floor seem to tilt on its axis.

A hand on his shoulder made him flail out reflexively, “DON’T TOUCH ME!!” he yelled at the beige blur hovering over him.

“Dude are you ok?” he could hear it say, barely able to make out shaggy brown hair and a stout form in what looked like a uniform.

“I’m fine...” he gasped, “I just can’t breathe. My chest—“

“I’m gonna get a nurse man hold on—“

“NO! No nurse...” Oh God he was dizzy. He was going to be sick. This oaf was probably going to have the calvary with a crash cart in here at any second and Scully had seen enough of his antics for one day. God please, just give her 24 hours of respite. He could die tomorrow he promised but give her today.

“My chest...I just need to breathe. I can’t....my chest hurts...I just need to breathe...” he pulled futilely on the reigns of his galloping, runaway pulse, unable to command the beast that continued to carry him to a sure and humiliating death.

“I can’t do this..I can’t do this...I “ the words tumbled from his mouth, unbidden. The grip on his shoulder tightened, and he swatted weakly at the offending gesture.

“Hey man I think it’s a panic attack. I get’em all the time. Listen to me you gotta breathe in your nose, dude. Breathe big. Big breaths. Focus on the floor, man. Look at the tiles. Focus on the still stuff.”

Infinitesimally, the grout, then the grid like pattern of the floor came into focus, as did the owner of the west coast valley-guy accent. A janitor. Name tag: Todd...Young. No... Not young... Thirties...Flunky..Another wave of nausea washed over him as he watched the other man rise and swing the door open, then closed.

“I put the sign on the door. Just take a minute man. It’s cool.”

As turbulent state of his thoughts began to abate, his throat began to close around a heavy lump and it started to sting behind his jaw, his mouth watering. He clenched his teeth and refused to cry on the grimy floor of a public restroom in front of an equally grimy guy who just so happened to have missed his calling as a therapist. With some effort, he swallowed the tears down along with his insulting first impressions. Todd sat cross-legged next to him, and remained otherwise silent for a time, allowing Mulder to finally reach some form of stasis.

“You ok dude? Man I thought you were having a heart attack. Guess I made the right call, he chuckled grimly, “Shit. I’da lost my job. You aren’t gonna die on me anyway are you?”

Mulder chuffed, “Not today.” He’d managed finally not to gulp down air.

Todd nodded and added distantly, “Cancer ward, man. It happens a lot here.”

And suddenly Mulder felt truly remorseful for his earlier aggression. This guy had probably seen a lot of grief in these halls. He wondered about this Good Samaritan. Probably tossed aside by most, and yet a blessing to the injured who happened along his path. Todd. He would not forget his name.

Feeling sufficiently contrite and knowing his extended absence from Scully’s room would not go unnoticed, he gathered himself from the floor and picked up his tie to tuck it in his pocket. Whatever words of thanks he could have formed during another moment when his wits were about him, they weren’t forthcoming right now. Todd heaved himself up as well, and went to retrieve his cart. One job finished, another to start. Mulder understood the feeling. It never really does end.

He strode slowly from the restroom, leaving Todd to his duties, and the festering source of his malaise bubbled up like a bratty child, refusing to be ignored.

Samantha. The feel of her snatching her hand from his had been akin to a slice to his palm. Quickly over and done, leaving a gaping wound destined to scar. He had failed and yet he hadn’t. She was returned to him and yet rejected their reunion. He had her back and yet had lost her all over again.

Scully. Alive and warm and...incomprehensibly lovely... and doctoring him from a hospital bed. He was so sure that call had meant the end. And yet they had been granted, by some deity or malevolent force, another chance. A life to live or to barter for some future price, he had still to know. Why can’t he smile? Why can’t he be happy? He’d gotten what he wanted, hadn’t he? The questions presented themselves in his mind in Scully’s voice, not taunting, exactly, but coaxing him into focus on the here and now, on the what is, and not what might be. And wouldn’t that be just like her...Is just like her...because... she’s okay. Today, right now. She’s okay and in the next room to his left. The idea seemed so ridiculously improbable at that moment that he began to giggle, manically at first, then fitfully, finally collapsing into full blown sobs on the bench just outside her door. Hands hiding his face, head between his knees, just as he’d been instructed. The blinds from inside her room close slowly by an understanding lookout, and for a moment, he has release.


End file.
